The Shoah (1939–1945)
Evacuation of Auschwitz
Janv. 1945·Auschwitz (évacuation)
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
On January 18, nearly sixty thousand detainees are thrown onto the roads toward the west; those who do not keep up are shot.
Facing the advance of the Red Army, the administration of Auschwitz received orders to evacuate the complex. On January 18, nearly sixty thousand prisoners were formed into columns and driven westward, on foot, through a harsh winter, toward the railway stations from which open trains were to carry them to the camps of the Reich.
Those who could no longer keep up were shot by the roadside; the columns left behind them an unbroken trail of bodies stretching over dozens of kilometers. A few thousand sick prisoners, left in the barracks and deemed unable to walk, would be found alive by the Soviets several days later.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Pologne
Musée d'État d'Auschwitz-Birkenau ; Yad Vashem ; Primo Levi, *Si c'est un homme*.